Printing Is Just Part of What We Do

As a full-service printing firm, we provide many business-to-business services you might not expect to find under one roof. Yes, we print just about any business form imaginable, but we also provide many collateral sales and marketing services to help you grow your business.

We also do custom signage and graphics!

Note: If you are looking for custom signage, banners, and decals, visit our Plum Grove Signs site or call 847.882.4020.

Here's a list of some popular services we provide.

Welcome to Our Amazing Resource Library!

Did you know we have a large collection of online resources available for your creative inspiration? Our free resource library includes creative graphic design ideas, sales and marketing solutions, management ideas, and best practices for managing a successful company.

When You Need Help, You Can Find it Here

Got a question about printing or need some help preparing your files for print? You might not know much about printing, but we do, and we're only too happy to share that knowledge, experience, and advice with you. After all, we want to make sure you look good on paper.

Helpful Resources that will make you love us!

Important Details

Printing, Marketing, & Mailing Made Easy

As an award-winning Top 100 US Business Printer, Plum Grove serves small, medium and large businesses along with not-for-profit organizations throughout the Midwest and across
the nation. We work as an extension of your business to provide savvy, green-friendly print & marketing solutions.

We’re So Much More Than What We Print

We're not just enthusiastic printers of business forms and sales and marketing materials, we're dedicated graphic arts professionals who seek to use our creative skills to improve the results of your printed documents and sales and marketing materials. How can we help you reach your goals?

All Alone and Misunderstood: Widows, Orphans, Runts, and Rivers

You've finally found the perfect content creation specialist. She's really something special. It doesn't matter the task you give to her, she creates superior content each and every time. More importantly, she's all about open communication and making sure that your needs are being met. But...there's always a but, right? There are a few parts of the content creation process that she's not familiar with -- widows, orphans, runts, and rivers.

Importance of Fixing Widows, Orphans, Runts, and Rivers

Here, in just a second, you'll be reading the definitions of the above mentioned composition aspects that you'll want to avoid within your marketing and informational pieces of marketing -- paper or digital -- that you share with your customers, vendors, distributors, suppliers, and consumers as a whole. Any type of marketing needs to look professional. After all, it is your company's brand that's on the line. The more professional your marketing looks, the more respected you will become in the eyes of consumers.

Definitions

Widow: A widow occurs when the last line of a paragraph is not able to fit at the bottom of a page or column. Instead, it sits at the top of the next page, looking out of place.

Orphan: An orphan is the exact opposite of a widow. It's when the first line of a paragraph sits at the bottom of a page by itself.

Runt: A runt can occur anywhere throughout a page or column, and it's when the last line found in a paragraph ends with a single word; this often happens with hyphenated words.

Rivers: A noticeable crack or line that runs through a paragraph, most commonly an issue after adjusting the tracking in a sentence.

Any graphic design specialist can help you recognize widows, orphans, runts, and rivers, but it's important to understand that these discrepancies are format-based, meaning that they will change from one format to another. Keeping this in mind, for each unique marketing format that you're using, the widows, orphans, runts, and rivers will need to be appropriately corrected.

What is Tracking?

Tracking is a way to fix widows, orphans, and runts. It involves highlighting a sentence or paragraph as a whole and adjusting the spacing between letters that form words, sentences, and paragraphs. It's imperative to start at the beginning of the content and and fix these composition issues (widows, orphans, and runts ) one by one. As one gets fixed, this could fix the rest of the issues, or it might create more, because with each fix, the remaining content will be affected. This is why a person should never flip back and forth from the beginning of their content to the end when fixing widows, orphans, and runts.

To make sure rivers don't occur, appropriate hyphenation settings need to be made along with correct hyphenation adjustments. If rivers still occur, a light touch of tracking adjustments may fix the problem.

Leave a Lasting Effect

The purpose of editing your content and correcting these composition errors is to ensure that your marketing leaves a positive, lasting effect. Your customers may not understand what widows and orphans are, but when they read through your content, it's essential that they not be distracted by these errors. When they can easily digest the content you present to them, the more effective your marketing endeavors will be.

Typography is the foundation of graphic design, and the most effective way to be a better designer is to understand type and use it confidently and creatively. This fully updated third edition is a comprehensive guide to creating professional type with Adobe InDesign. It covers micro and macro typography concepts, from understanding the nuance of a single spacing width to efficiently creating long and complex documents. Packed with visual examples, InDesign expert and acclaimed design instructor Nigel French shows not just how to use InDesign's extensive type features, but why certain approaches are preferable to others, and how to avoid common mistakes. Whether you're creating a single-page flyer or a thousand-page catalog, whether your documents will be printed or viewed on screen, InDesign Type is an invaluable resource for getting the most out of InDesign's typographic toolset.

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Online Estimating

Need an estimate on a printing project, before you commit to having it done? Whether you're planning a simple piece with few requirements or a more complex project that involves advanced services such as design, bindery, mailing, or marketing, we'll provide a quick, accurate estimate to help you plan your budget.

Online Ordering

Order your printing safely and securely straight from our website. Our order forms make it easy, and reorders are a breeze. Plus, you can track your orders all the way through to completion and view your complete order history anytime. If you order the same printing products frequently, ask us about creating a document library to save even more time.

Send a File

Everyone uses the Internet to exchange information. But what if the information you need to exchange is in the form of a huge graphic file? No problem! Our website lets you send files of virtually any size effortlessly and securely, without the hassle of a traditional FTP. Plus, our email confirmation and online job tracking system eliminate the worry of not knowing if the file made it through.

Online Proofing

We all want things to be quick and easy, don't we? Our online proofing system is both. In addition to the instant proofing options available with uDesignIT! and FastTrack, we provide online digital proofs for orders that require them. When a proof is ready, we email a link, so you can view the proof securely on our website. While there, you can approve the proof, reject it, or suggest changes - all from the same secure screen. What could be simpler than that?

Customer Portals

The first time you do business on our website, we'll automatically create an account for you in our Online Print Center. There, you'll be able to track orders, view order histories, update credentials, view proofs, and reorder your printing. We can even create a branded portal for your entire organization if you'd like, complete with branches, document libraries, company managers, order approval hierarchies, custom notifications, inventory management, and more.

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Document Library

The document library is our term for the set of online order forms unique to your company or to specific departments or branches within your organization. Each item represents a specific printed piece. For example, if you have 10 different printed forms that get used throughout your company, you'd have 10 separate document library items set up - one for each form. Document libraries make it easy to order, track, and inventory your most frequently used printed items.

uDesignIT!

uDesignIT! makes it easy to personalize "templated" items, such as business cards, that are unique to your organization. Items appear as part of your document library and include an instant proof that updates automatically as you fill out the form. Changes are not limited to text alone. Images, backgrounds, colors, and fonts can all be made variable, as well, for even greater flexibility.

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The Ideas Collection

We all have times when we could use a little inspiration in our work. If you're running short on ideas, we're here to help with articles and insights meant to ignite your creative fire. From marketing tips to creative how-to's, you're sure to find something to spark the imagination.

Our List of Greatest Treasures

We all have websites we rely on every day for information relevant to our businesses and lives. Then there are the exceptional sites -- the ones we stumble on occasionally that are sooooooooooooo good, we make sure to save them in a special place for future reference. Over the years, we've built up a pretty good trove of website gold, and now we're sharing that bounty with you, our customers.

Popular Graphic Arts Software

Keeping track of the latest software upgrades is enough to drive anybody crazy... unless you have access to our easy-to-use list of the most popular graphic arts software. What a helpful reference tool!